Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

By Ivan Klima

A New York Times Notable Book: A Czech filmmaker survives Communism with dreams of artistic freedom in this “darkly powerful novel” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Pavel Fukova was once a promising, award-winning documentary filmmaker. But when his homeland is overtaken by a Communist regime, he is forced to survive by working as a cameraman for the state-run television station. Now middle-aged, he dreams of one day making a film — a searing portrait of his times that the authorities would never allow.

When the communist regime collapses, Pavel is unprepared for the new world of supposedly unlimited freedom—and unable to make the film he has always wanted to make. Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light is a powerful, important novel about the struggle between the ideal and the temptations of freedom.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780802196675

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

1

A CROWD HAD begun to gather at the lower end of the square. Most of the people were young. Some of them Pavel remembered from earlier demonstrations. He had a good memory for faces and even thought he recognized some of the onlookers lounging on the pavement. Like him, they were fixtures on these occasions. They were probably here on duty too, though it was duty of a different kind. Not far away, in front of a large display window full of shoes, was a man with a small movie camera. He didn’t recognize the man, though he knew most people in his line of work; perhaps he was a curious tourist, an amateur photographer or someone taking pictures of the demonstrators for the archives of the security police.

But what was he doing here himself? Why were he and his crew filming these events? For television? The network wouldn’t broadcast a thing he shot, or rather what they did broadcast would have little to do with what actually happened. Perhaps he was working for the future.

But what was the future?

The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.

Several uniformed policemen were standing around on the pavement. As usual, it was a peaceful demonstration. No one was shouting slogans, or getting ready to throw stones through shop windows, overturn cars or attack the police. Yet in most of the faces he observed through his viewfinder, there was tension, the nervous anticipation of the inevitable clash that would take place according to precise, though unwritten and not exactly high-minded, principles.

Why had the demonstrators come? What were they trying to prove, or change? What did they believe in that made them willing to endure being beaten, locked up, dismissed from their jobs? Was their protest for some higher cause, or were they there only because there wasn’t enough else to interest or motivate them—were they simply bored?

He wanted to ask them, but knew there was an impenetrable barrier between himself and them, a barrier symbolized by the logo on the transmission van and by his camera, a barrier as blatant as the double row of barbed-wire fencing that isolated this country from its neighbours, or at least from the country to which he had once foolishly attempted to flee. Sometimes he felt a vague uneasiness about being on this side of the barrier yet, at the same time, he felt safe. No one would beat him or interrogate him or try to blow him off the street with a water-cannon.

The crowd closed ranks, although there were still no more than a few hundred people in it. A young woman raised a piece of white cloth above her head. It bore the inscription LESS SMOKE, MORE AIR. He took a shot of the banner, studying the woman’s face and hands as he did so.

Her hands were small, almost childlike, with unpainted nails, and they were quivering slightly, perhaps because of the wind straining against the banner. Her face too was childlike, guileless and innocent. For a moment she reminded him of Albina. Where was she and what would she be doing right now? She might be somewhere here on this square holding a sign above her head. He’d put her out of his mind for so long. What would he say to her if she appeared? What would she say to him if she saw him on the pavement, trying to capture her and her presence on an Ampex tape?

She would say: how could you bring yourself to do this? Or she would say nothing at all. Why should she talk to him?

He looked around at the crowd, partly out of professional interest—in case he saw a new banner—but he also wondered if he might not actually catch a glimpse of her. She wasn’t here, of course; there were only more uniformed men on the pavement and a lorry with a water-cannon mounted over the cab which had begun moving slowly down from the upper regions of the square. In the same instant the crowd came together and acquired a voice of its own, a low rumble like a swarm of bees or a looming thunderhead. He felt its agitation grow in anticipation of the coming clash.

The clash would be as absurd as all the others before it, but there was no stopping it. Everyone knew this: those who would administer the beatings and those who would be beaten. This utter certainty transformed the raw determination on both sides into movements that almost seemed preordained. Even Pavel found himself hoping that the clash would soon start, not because he was eager for violence, but because he wanted the inevitable to be over with so that he could do his job and leave.

A yellow-and-white car with a large loudspeaker on its roof moved slowly down the square. The amplified voice, sounding more bored than threatening, announced that the gathering was illegal and ordered everyone present to disperse peacefully. The clamour around Pavel grew.

He took a shot of the car with the loudspeaker and then looked back at the woman with the touchingly naïve banner. The white cloth in her hands was trembling more obviously now.

When it was over he walked down one of the narrow side-streets to where he had parked his red sports car. He looked at it, as he always did, with affection, then got in and drove off. The road and the pavements were still wet, and the buildings were spattered with water, but anyone who happened to come this way now would be unaware of what had happened here only moments before. He drove as fast as he dared through the narrow, winding streets. He would love to drive somewhere far away, as far away as possible from people, demonstrations and water-cannons, but he’d promised to visit Eva that evening, and had promised her son that he would stop off at the stadium to watch his game—he was the goalkeeper of a youth soccer team. He was a sweet kid, and Pavel felt a fatherly concern for him. It was certainly more pleasant to demonstrate his interest in the kid by watching a game than by talking to him about school in the evening. First, however, he had to drop in at the studio, look at the tapes and hand over his material.

The news-room secretary told him the boss had asked where he was twice that day. She supposed it was because of the president’s birthday. They’d talked about it at the meeting, she said; it was a big event, they were going to have to shoot a special report at the castle, and he and Sokol were naturals for the job.

He didn’t respond. It gave him some private satisfaction that they would trust him, of all people, with such a responsible job, but publicly he liked to say that the only thing he had in common with the head of state was that both of them had been let out of prison the same year.

As usual, the small editing room was hot and stuffy and stank of smoke and bad coffee. To make matters worse it was crammed with people who wanted to know what had really happened on the square. Two bottles of wine and some glasses stood on the mixing desk. Someone must have been celebrating something; you could always find something to celebrate. He pulled a banknote out of his wallet, tossed it in the kitty and poured himself a drink, then handed the tape to the executive producer, a churlish man named Halama, who slipped it into the machine.

Pavel watched the monitor intently. There was the young woman who wanted to breathe less smoke and more air, but now he noticed a young man standing near her. He was tall and thin, wearing a check shirt, and had a pale, dreamy face that looked briefly and sullenly into the camera. He has blue eyes like me, Pavel thought. In fact, he’s very like me twenty-five years ago. Would I have been out there too, demonstrating, if I were twenty years younger?

The young man moved out of the frame. The car with the loudspeaker crossed the screen. The crowd roared and stood its ground. A squad of riot police with truncheons poured out of one of the side-streets. The crowd began to break up and retreat, chanting: ‘Why can’t you be human? Why can’t you be human?’

‘All of that’s got to go absolutely!’ said Halama irritably. As if the rest of it could stay.

He tried to spot the girl with the banner again and couldn’t, but he noticed the young man in the check shirt holding his hands over his face. Truncheons thumped and thudded against bodies; there were shouts and curses. Someone behind him sobbed. He turned around, surprised. Halama’s secretary was wiping her eyes. Then she quickly shook her head: ‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing,’ she apologized, as though she’d done something inappropriate.

A precisely aimed stream of water came pouring out of the water-cannon. More shouting and running, then a rather good close-up of a face streaming with water, hair drenched, eyes blinded.

Pavel looked at Halama, whose narrow lips were drawn tight, his grey face expressing distaste. Was this a response to what had happened? No: more likely to the fact that it had all been captured so clearly on tape. ‘Don’t even think of using any of this!’ he said.

‘Why do they do it?’ whispered the secretary behind Pavel.

Her question was not directed at him, but it was one he had asked himself. Only now, when someone else asked it, did an answer occur to him. ‘They want something different,’ he said.

‘But they won’t get it that way.’

‘Maybe they’re not after anything in particular at all.’

He turned back to the monitor. He’d managed to take a wide shot of the fleeing crowd. The retreat was so well executed it looked staged.

Almost thirty years ago he too had wanted something different, wanted it so badly he had tried to escape from the country. It wasn’t that they’d gone after him with truncheons, like this. Back then, it would have been futile to demonstrate; no one would have turned up. Why had he tried to get out? It was a question he still found hard to answer. Perhaps because his father had left his mother and he couldn’t stand living in a half-empty house. He had also wanted to travel. To see Indians, the Yucatán and the Mayan pyramids. He’d gone to the Mexican embassy and offered to work for them for nothing. They asked him what skills he had. He was good at photography and knew a little Spanish. Unfortunately there are many people like you, they said. If you were a doctor, we might consider you. So he decided to run away, and Peter decided to go with him.

He’d met Peter by chance. They were both taking pictures at the zoo, in the reptile pavilion, when they got talking. Pavel said he’d like to make films about wild animals—lions in the desert, tigers in the jungle, kangaroos in the bush, rattlesnakes or sand vipers sunning themselves on rocks. Peter was more interested in the snake as a symbol. ‘The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made,’ he said, quoting the Bible. The snake had seduced man into curiosity, made him long for omniscience, and so it had become a symbol of evil and satanic will, though not everywhere and not to everyone. Peter loved to display his knowledge. Some Egyptian pharaohs wore bronze headbands representing a snake, which they believed would protect them from evil. Some African and Indian tribes thought of the snake as a divine being. Peter wanted to study theology. He was fascinated by every facet of the relationship between man and God, by anything which suggested superhuman power. There was something pontifical in his manner of speaking, as though he were always trying urgently to communicate something. His voice was unpleasantly shrill. It would be a handicap were he to become a preacher, but in the conversations he had with Pavel it didn’t matter. The important thing was that he too longed to travel, to visit the Holy Land and Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus and the temples in Luxor and Palenque. The very first time they met, they shared their secret wishes and tried to outdo each other with their knowledge. But neither of them had the slightest hope of seeing what they longed to see, or even of getting beyond the border, for the border was sealed with barbed wire. The wire was a symbol, like the snake. How could you possibly live your entire life, learn anything, or achieve anything in a country fenced in with barbed wire?

They began to fashion plans to escape. At first it was a game, but gradually they surrendered to the allure of their own longings, those perfectly integrated steps that would take them to their goal. Who had been the instigator of this act that had changed the course of both their lives? He was the more pragmatic and had far more practical ideas. But he also had greater misgivings. Peter was more casual, and besides, he firmly believed, sacrilegiously perhaps, given the implications of what they were preparing to do, that the mercy and love of God would protect them. Peter had turned out to be wrong about divine protection, but his faith had made Pavel start to believe in something as well.

What had he actually believed in then?

That you must not live without purpose, that you must look to the consequences of your actions, live in a way that brings harm or pain to no one. And you must leave some trace of yourself behind, and that trace would be a work of art. At the time he hadn’t been entirely sure what form it would take, but he knew he had the power to create it.

The final escape plan seemed brilliantly simple. They would cross the border in the north where there was no barbed wire, continue to the sea, then catch a boat. Stowing away seemed easier than cutting through wire, clambering over a wall or swimming across a heavily patrolled river. Unfortunately it wasn’t as easy as they’d imagined. The God Peter thought of as their protector was clearly preoccupied with worries of cosmic dimensions in which the two of them had no place.

The tape was nearly over. All that remained at the scene were the victors, puddles of water and several men looking on from the pavement with professional interest. Pavel tried to fix their faces in his memory. Why? Just in case.

Halama stood up disdainfully. Someone behind him began to clap, and several others joined in. Were they applauding his professional achievement, the victors, the puddles of water or the enemy that had just been dissipated?

All of us applaud on demand, yet we fear everyone.

2

THE BOY WAS wearing a black jersey and yellow gym shorts—the colours of a jaguar. A proper goalkeeper’s outfit. He was tall for his age but still too short to block a shot placed just below the crossbar.

Pavel stood behind the goal and asked him how they were doing.

‘OK, but I’ve been lucky. They hit the post.’ The boy gestured to his right. ‘I still haven’t had a touch. It’s good you’ve come, Pavel. I never know when to move forward.’

‘You have to make up your mind fast. When a sheep or a wild boar starts day-dreaming, it misses the right moment to run away, and the jaguar gets it.’ He felt awkward with the boy; he was really talking about his own experience with Peter.

The play moved closer to the goal, and he was glad not to have to talk. When had he ever been able to act quickly, with resolve? They’d caught him once and locked him up, and since then he’d simply tried to keep out of their way. An animal might seem to know when his life or his freedom is threatened, but do people? They think they’re running towards freedom when in fact they’re rushing headlong into a trap.

‘Now! Now!’ he shouted at the boy in the black-and-yellow outfit. The boy charged out to meet the attacking players, managed to get to the ball and deflect it off his fist back into the field. He stood for a while at the edge of the box and looked at the retreating cluster of players.

‘How was that?’ he said when he came back.

‘That was great, Robin, you got to the ball first.’

‘I need you to stand there all the time and tell me when to move out,’ said the boy.

He wanted to tell him that that would only ruin him as a goalie, but he stopped himself.

How old would his own son have been today? If indeed it had been a boy. Whenever he thought about the child, he thought about him as a son. How would he have treated him? Would he have been a good father?

I’d probably have done a decent job, he thought. I take this one out in my car and I advise him when to go for the ball. But I know that I can walk out on his mother and him any time I like, without losing any sleep over it. The truth is he’s not my own son and he never will be, and his mother will probably never be my wife.

After the match he waited for the boy to shower and change. When they got in the car he noticed a cheap gold ring glittering on Robin’s finger. It didn’t go with his jeans at all. Eva must have got it for him. That was her business, their business. He never asked about more than he absolutely needed to know.

Eva lived on the seventh floor of a tower block. The flat had one large room and two smaller ones. Her former husband lived in the larger of these. He was a quiet, affable person, who worked as a fitter and was away from home most of the time on construction jobs. He could probably have found himself a new flat but didn’t appear to be looking for one. With this arrangement, he was at least close to his son, and perhaps he wanted to stay close to his former wife as well.

She never told him why her marriage was over. He assumed it was because her husband did not seem prosperous or important enough. Pavel was a better bet in her eyes; prosperity, like importance, is all too relative. Eva had sought him out herself. Two years ago she had seen a film he’d made on divorce and its impact on children, and she had written to him about it. She was in a similar situation and wanted to see him and ask his advice.

The film was a documentary he’d directed and appeared in. The problem it dealt with had haunted him ever since his own childhood, and he was pleased that the film had spoken to someone. He wrote back, giving his home address. Several days later she rang his doorbell. It was evening. She introduced herself and asked hesitantly if she was disturbing him or his wife. She was wearing a short bluish-purple skirt, a reddish-purple sweater, high dark purple leather boots and an ultramarine ribbon in her dyedred hair. Large green jasper earrings were swinging from her ears. He assured her that she wasn’t disturbing him, that he wasn’t married and that his mother was away. She was clearly pleased to hear this. She walked in without an invitation, her hips swaying and her bracelets clinking with every step. She sat down on a chair facing him, her skirt riding up as she crossed her legs. She looked at him eagerly. He asked what he could do for her. He had done a lot for her already, she said, just by making the film and letting her see him. Without boring him with the banal details, she was living with a man she couldn’t respect. She’d married him because she was pregnant; there was no love between them. She had a bizarre way of speaking, hesitating in the middle of sentences, sometimes not completing them. Her face was plain, but there was something bold and inviting in her every movement and glance. When she finished telling her story, she fell silent and seemed to be waiting for him to embrace her. When he didn’t, she stood up, walked over to him and said, ‘I want you to make love to me.’

When Pavel let himself into Eva’s flat, Argus bounded out to meet him, planted his huge paws on his chest and licked his face. Only then did Eva appear, freshly made-up as always, her mouth painted, her eye-shadow replenished, strawberry-blonde hair combed high. She could have gone directly in front of a camera. He had to bend over slightly to kiss her on the mouth. She smiled at him. She did everything she could to bind him to her. She tried to be pleasant, to tolerate his eccentricities, his occasional disappearances, his silences. She even went with him sometimes to visit his mother, always remembering to take flowers, though his mother forgot about her the minute she left. She did his laundry for him, cooked for him, made love to him and listened to what he said. If he was silent for too long, she would complain that he hardly ever spoke to her.

What did they talk about?

About life, of course.

What was life?

Life was a heap of things, an enormous accumulation of old clothes, tubes, creams, mincing-machines, coffee-mills. It was also masses of wires, lamps, mirrors, cameras, cassettes, scissors and water-cannons.

He took his sweater off and went into the living-room.

The television in the corner was on as usual, but nobody was watching. The sound was turned down, and for a while he watched a silent singer swinging her arms to the rhythm, while behind her waves beat against a rock and a gull hovered overhead. Lacklustre, empty images, but who had any good ideas any more? Who had a point of view? Who was doing decent work? He was, or at least he could still inject the most heavy-handed material with life, and one day, when they let him show what he could really do …

‘Guess what we’re having for supper,’ said the boy, coming up to him.

He shook his head.

‘Fried chicken. Your favourite.’

‘I eat everything.’

‘Except potato dumplings.’

‘Potato dumplings I can do without. They don’t fit down my throat.’ He made a face as though he were gagging.

The boy laughed. ‘Dad likes them.’ Then he stopped.

‘He was here yesterday,’ he said, somewhat embarrassed.

‘He bought me these jeans.’

‘And the ring?’

‘Yeah. Do you like it?’

‘Let me see it.’ He took the ring from the boy. ‘I’ve never worn rings,’ he said, avoiding the question. The ring had a hallmark and might have been a family heirloom. The boy’s paternal grandfather had once owned a factory. The factory had been nationalized, but the state had apparently let the family keep their jewellery. Perhaps it was the jewellery that had first attracted Eva to her husband. But either there wasn’t enough to go around, or it wasn’t enough to compensate for the impoverished heir’s other shortcomings.

Pavel had inherited nothing. When they caught him, he was wearing a threadbare duffle-coat with twenty marks in his pocket and some maps in a knapsack: a map of Germany, one of Belgium and a forty-year-old map of Mexico. It

Reviews for Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Spoiler alertBeetje dubbel gevoel bij dit boek. Aan de ene kant is het erg interessant als evocatie van de grote omwentelingen in Oost-Europa na de val van de Muur in 1989 (hoewel nergens landen en namen genoemd worden); de hoofdfiguur, cameraman Pavel, heeft zich na een mislukte ontsnappingspoging in zijn jeugd, aangepast aan het oude regime en volgt, net als al zijn landgenoten, gedwee de officiële lijn, ook al ziet hij in dat hij meewerkt aan “het regime van de leugen”; Pavel klampt zich vast aan de vage hoop dat hij ooit ruimte zal krijgen voor zijn artistieke dromen. Dit boek levert dus andermaal een mooie tekening van de beklemming in Oost-Europa onder het communisme, het “leven in de leugen”, met vooral een fantastisch portret van de oude, bijna seniele president in zijn kasteel (duidelijk naar het beeld van Gustav Husak), vol paranoïde gedachten. Klima legt ook treffend de band met het persoonlijke leven van Pavel dat volledig vastgelopen is: zijn relaties springen allemaal af, het kind dat hij graag wou, is geaborteerd door de vrouw van zijn dromen; hij loopt depressief door het leven; net als het regime is Pavel in een doodlopende straat beland. En dan komt de omwenteling, die door Klima maar fragmentair beschreven wordt. Maar door de ogen van Pavel zien we dat de nieuwe toekomst eigenlijk geen echte veranderingen brengt, een boel oude apparatsjiks wurmen zich op de vrijgekomen plaatsen terwijl de echte (idealistische) revolutionairen zich in de kortste keren vastrijden, Pavel zelf blijkt ook niet (meer) in staat om de ruimte die hij nu krijgt te benutten om zijn droom waar te maken en in zijn persoonlijke leven verliest hij zelfs de laatste band met de mensen waarvan hij houdt. Als u nu denkt: wat een deprimerend verhaal, dan heeft u volop gelijk, maar Klima weet het wel mooi onder woorden te brengen; je ziet duidelijke verwantschap met Kafka en vooral Kundera.Toch is dit naar mijn gevoel niet helemaal een geslaagde roman. Klima gooit verschillende tijdlagen door elkaar, schakelt ook geregeld over naar het ambitieuze filmscenario waar Pavel al jarenlang aan werkt, en dat zorgt wel voor een zekere dynamiek en mooie spiegeleffecten, maar het maakt de lectuur niet echt gemakkelijk. Bovendien komen sommige verhaallijnen niet helemaal tot hun recht en blijven enkele personages (vooral de vrouwelijke) nogal vlak. Tenslotte, en dat stoort me echt wel het meest, vindt Klima het nodig om een beroep te doen op magisch-realistische elementen en dat vind ik altijd een zwaktebod.

[pamelad_570511 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Waiting for the Light, Waiting for the Dark by Ivan KlimaIn 1968 when the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia, Klima was in London. Unlike the quarter of a million Czechs, including the writers Skvorecky and Kundera, who escaped into exile, Klima chose to return to Prague. His books were banned for twenty years, but smuggled out in samizdat and published overseas.The book's main character is Pavel Fuca, a film director who can no longer make his own films, so works as a camera man under state censorship producing trivia and sacrificing his principles to expedience. Pavel consoles himself by planning the film he will make when he is free, but when that freedom arrives he has already lost hope.Some passages that made an impression:Wretchedness was the lot of those who hadn't the strength to be honourable nor the courage to be dishonourable. There's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that you'll never get the chance. the system never allowed you to win, and so it saved you from defeat as well.

[amerynth · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ivan Klima's book "Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light" was a really interesting look at the fallout from the fall of the Communist regime in Prague. Set in the days before and after the Velvet Revolution, its narrator, Pavel, is going through a midlife crisis of sorts. He lives in a world where there are few choices and then too many-- either way he is completely stuck and unsure of where he is going. Pavel has a rich fantasy life that really bleeds into the story... it was difficult to keep what was supposed to be true and what was supposed to be fantasy straight. Overall, it was an interesting and thought-provoking book, but hard to follow in places.

[diefledermaus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a sad, slow, well-written book. It takes place in Prague before the fall of the Communist regime and deals with the accommodations that people must make and the decline of idealism. Pavel, the main character, is a filmmaker who works for the government-run television station. He films the events (political protests) but doesn’t participate in any way – perhaps a bit of an obvious symbolism for his detached character. However, the filmmaker also has the potential to be an artist who can create something meaningful. The book explores this dualism – detachment vs creative activity - in Pavel’s frustrated ambition to be a director/producer making art films and the sections of the book entitled “Film” which describe actual films that Pavel has made, only changed and twisted. Pavel himself is not the most likeable or interesting character. He fits in the group of middle-aged disillusioned men often with frustrated ambitions/disdainful of material success/in indifferent relationships/filled with ennui/having a midlife crisis. In a relationship with a separated woman, Pavel doesn’t love her and nostalgically remembers past relationships. This is also a rather predictable element of the disillusioned man character. However, his ideal women are shown, at the end, to be constructs like many of his dreams. Pavel is different from many of these characters in that he has a legitimate grievance and is not just some bored artist with a midlife crisis. His constant questioning – written in the book as the third person narration – is a probing examination of the government, as well as individual reactions and accommodations. The narrator will pose a question then answer it, often succinctly and bleakly. Pavel’s reaction here is, in fact, useless, but just one of the ways that he deals with his situation. The Film sections are another. Pavel describes several of the films that he is required to make – a profile of the president, a documentary describing an incident where two men took a bus full of children hostage and demanded to be let over the border – which are given a slightly altered, psychologically developed life in the Film chapters. Especially good is Pavel’s description of the president who is going slowly insane and becoming increasingly paranoid.The author uses an interesting technique that can be a bit confusing. He describes Pavel’s memories seamlessly in another scene, so that it often seems as though he has actually described the future. For example, for a while I didn’t realize that one of the relationships that he was describing was in the past. Still, memories are always simultaneous – constantly there as a reminder or check to the present and I suppose this is Klima’s way of approximating this. Klima in the end shows characters at every level capable of betrayal and accommodation of the regime. After the new government takes over, Pavel doesn’t go off to make artistic films and doesn’t go back to the woman he loves. As a young man, he tried to escape the country, was caught, paid the price, then joined the government-run station. While he imagined it was the system keeping him back, he finds that he has gotten used to his steady paycheck and starts making profitable commercials and pornography. But he’s not the only one. His coworkers are described as assessing the political situation, ready to make films for the current government or the opposition. Even personal relationships are dependent on whether the Communists are in power, as Pavel’s unloved girlfriend decides her husband is a better bet after the fall of the Communists. Pavel’s co-conspirator in the escape plan didn’t “sell out” as he did – though educated, he took a job as a caretaker to avoid dealing with his enemies. He, too, is capable of betrayal and jumps at an opportunity to do the same kind of censoring in the new government. Pavel’s creative work, the film sections, provides some relief for getting around the constant compromises, but in the end, even that is not enough.